Category: Uncategorized

Protester dies after fall from California redwood
Moron.

…when out of the blue they make idiotic statements like the one Harry Belefonte made yesterday?
What provokes this kind of sheer meanness? I mean, come on. There’s a war on, Harry. It’s time for everyone to pull together, not apart. And a stupid comment about Colin Powell is hardly the way to do that. Did someone stick a mike in your face and you just couldn’t come up with anything better to say?
Sheesh.

(Scroll down) Best of the Web says that apparently it is. And the Weekly Standard has apparently taken Miller’s piece down.
Too bad. It was a good story while it lasted.

Michelle Malkin (*sigh*) writes about how Christian broadcasters are knocking NPR programming off the air in some markets.

The religious radio revolution is the result of plain old hard work and sharp business acumen. Unlike NPR and its nearly 300 member affiliates across the country, which have grown fat and lazy while feasting on federal taxpayer handouts since birth, Christian entrepreneurs have been diligently raising private capital to purchase “full-power” stations on the low end of the FM dial, which is reserved for non-commercial, educational stations.
A provision buried in federal broadcasting law gives full-power stations the power to bump small “translator” stations-such as local NPR affiliates that retransmit programming from larger, distant sources-off the air.
Caught napping, NPR radio executives and their media cheerleaders are crying foul. Left-wing radio host Laura Flanders who hosts a San Francisco talk show attacked evangelical programming as “vitriol.” A Variety magazine editorial lambasted Christian radio as “strident.” “It is, like, nuts,” complained one NPR general manager to the New York Times.

And you’re feeling that fire roasting yours, aren’t you?
High time NPR got what was coming to it.

Go read Lileks. As usual, a brilliant tour-de-force.

Pardon me whilst I rant.
Daylight Savings Time is one of the more idiotic, boneheaded, and frankly bullshit ideas we humans have saddled ourselves with since God placed us here on His green earth.
Would someone explain to me exactly why I would want it to be nearly 8:00 in the morning right now rather than nearly 7:00 in the morning?
We live in Indiana, which means that by legislative fiat we live in the Eastern time zone. That’s great if you watch a lot of TV and can’t convert Eastern time to, say, Central time. But it sucks if you live practically within spitting distance of the boundary between Eastern and Central time.
My main objection to DST is that it is too dark in the mornings and too light too late at night. I have trouble sleeping when there is the tiniest amount of light (by way of example, the green LED on the Dish Network receiver is often enough to keep me awake all night). So the sun being up until nearly 10PM of a summer’s day just doesn’t work for me (and I know this having lived in the East and having put up with DST).
The idea of DST actually started with Benjamin Franklin on what must have been a bad brain day for our revered Founder and Savant. Then idiots came up with DST as a wartime exigency that apparently was supposed to make people think there was a war on. The problem is that it started clear back in WWI and nobody ever thought to turn the clocks back. And there was no Federal law mandating DST until Nixon (another reason he couldn’t possibly have been a Republican), which law made it mandatory unless a state said “Fuck you, Jack, we ain’t having any of that,” which after a year’s experiment that I remember vividly, particularly from all the people cursing about having to change their clocks (and this in a day before every household appliance including your electric toothbrush had a clock in it), was exactly what Indiana said.
My attitude has always been, why change the clocks? If you want more time in the evening to spend outdoors, why not change your behavior? Why can’t corporations agree that in the summer, 9 to 5 ought to be 8 to 4? Personally I work for a company that is located in Maryland, so in the summer I work from 7:30 to 4 and in the winter I work from…well…7:30 to 4 because I prefer it, but there was a time when I did switch an hour in the winter just so as to be on the same time with my colleagues in the east.
The argument is that Indiana should switch like everyone else because it confuses people who want to do business with people in our state. To people who promulgate this argument in the digital age, I say: Fuck you. You don’t understand the concept; in an age of e-mail, faxes, voice mail, and electronic fund transfers, THERE IS NO COMPELLING REASON FOR US TO CHANGE TIME. Our legislators and other idiot savants who adopt this reasoning say that Indiana loses commerce because nobody in New York City knows what time it is in Indianapolis. I say, it’s an hour’s difference, big stinking whoop, so call me back when I’m available; and anyone who tries to call me from the East at 8 AM their time in the summer gets what they deserve anyway, because NOBODY should be making business calls before 10AM anyway (it takes time for the caffeine to work). Plus, given the fact that these days you usually get voice mail anyway when you call, regardless of the time of day, what exact difference does it really make?
The same morons say that our recalcitrance on DST makes it difficult to schedule meetings with people in Indiana because the people in NYC never know what time it is here, so they set a 10AM summer conference call and the Indiana people never call in because they think it’s an hour later than it really is. I’m living proof that if you have any common sense and live in Indiana (meaning that you probably ought to have more common sense than anyone who lives in NYC), it is not difficult to remember that in the summer you have to call in to that 10AM conference call at 9AM, regardless of whether or not the caffeine has kicked in. It is an adjustment that is done on the Indiana end, not the NYC end, and it is not difficult to do as long as you are aware just when NYC is on EDT and when it is on EST. Which does require a minimum amount of brain power, but we’re Hoosiers, so most of us have at least that.
The upshot of all of this being that Rep. Julia Carson (D-IN) is a fucking idiot who needs to be retired before she manages to get Congress to mandate DST whether we like it or not. (She’s a fucking idiot anyway but that isn’t my main point. Unless it is.) Thank God for the family farmers in this state; they don’t like DST and it probably won’t ever get a serious hearing in our legislature as long as they don’t. But Carson running around in Washington saying we ought to switch is an embarrassment. I for one would rather fight than switch.
If the world ever comes to its senses and drops DST, though, I think we should be on CST year round instead of EST. We’re 180 miles from Chicago and over 700 from NYC, so why in the world are we on EST? Oh, yeah, because the world financial markets are in NYC. Which is meaningless because our world is wired now. Who really makes phone calls anymore? I haven’t made a business phone call outside of Indianapolis since 1995, personally, except for the monthly departmental yak-yak conference call I grudgingly participate in.
So screw DST and the horse it rode in on. I’m going back to bed. Oh, wait. It’s time to go to work.

…there’s this guy who ought to get the death penalty.

AKRON, Ohio — A man was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday for impregnating his teenage stepdaughter with a syringe of his own sperm.
John Goff, 41, quoted Bible verses and said he forgave the judge, police, prosecutors and his stepdaughter.

They don’t much like people like you in the big house, thankfully.

This story recounts an abomination.
The only good part about it is that it happened in a state that has the death penalty. Now if only the jury has the balls to impose it.

Via Best of the Web (link at the right, I’m lazy), Larry Miller reports in the Weekly Standard that punk rocker bands who dis the Prez onstage had probably better watch their ass.
Perhaps I should rethink my fear (well, not exactly fear…more like sad resignation) that someday I’ll be old and today’s kids will be running the country. We might do worse than some of the kids in Mr. Miller’s article:

Black boots and nose rings and tattoos, but they knew, to a person, what was right. They might not be able to point out the no-fly zones on a map, but they knew what was right. If we Americans fight terror all the way it’ll take many years, and neither Trent Lott’s kids nor Tom Daschle’s kids are going to fight it. It’ll be fought by a lot of the kids at the “Blockbuster” Pavilion, though. Jack’s oldest just signed up a few months ago out of college. A five-year hitch for an Army specialty. An important one. In harm’s way. Jack’s a little scared. Wouldn’t you be?

Yep. But I’d go myself if they’d take me.

Here’s a great new ad for Bill Simon.
I realize it’s Internet-focused, but this needs to be running on TV all over California.